


Handfasting

by icarus_chained



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Betrayal, F/M, Fruit, Handfasting, Kidnapping, Marriage, Oaths & Vows, Promises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 04:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hades and Persephone, the first time she returns to him after the price of pomegranate seeds is revealed. </p>
<p>Written for the prompt of: "Pomegranate juice stained her fingers like the blood of a ruby."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Handfasting

He found her at table, the morning after she had returned to him. What morning could be had, at least, here beneath the Earth. He found her still and silent, her back to him as she stood beside the marble, her head bowed and her attention fixed on the object in her hand.

A pomegranate, he saw, as he moved silently around to stand before her, as he moved to see her face. In her hand, the juice red against her fingers like the blood of rubies, lay a torn and opened fruit.

And in her face, he thought, lay an aspect he had not seen before. No more a maiden, now, innocent and sweet as the fruits of the earth. But a queen, stern and terrible as the underworld that had become her home. In her face, he saw the future he had wrought, the bride he had bought with such red-stained trickery.

"You might have offered me all the wealth of your realm," she said quietly, more to the dark gleaming of seeds in torn flesh than to him. "You might have offered me gold and rubies, all the wealth of the deepest earth. Hades, who is god of all that springs forth from the darkness below. You might have offered me riches beyond dreams. And instead, you would have a seed betray me. You would have the fruit of earth itself bring me low."

There was pain in her, a deep and martial fury in the hard lines of her features, in the clawed curl of her fingers against the fruit. A future well wrought, a deep and terrible justice borne forth in an anguished breast.

He paused for a moment at the sight of it, at the knowledge of it. Held still, a chthonic patience, before he reached out with pale, cold hands to cup the back of hers and twine their fingers in red flesh.

"There is more than cold wealth to rest beneath the earth," he said, very quietly. "And there is more than riches to return to it, when they are spent. All seeds spring forth from me, in the beginning. And all seeds fall back to me, in the end. It is ... the way of things." It was not an apology. It was never that. But she looked at him anyway, and he tried at least to explain. "It was my wealth I offered you," he said. "And my wealth that betrayed you. Not yours. It could not have bound you, were it not mine."

And though it was not an apology, though it _could_ not be, still he saw a strange softening of her features because of it. A glimmer once more of the maiden he had first seen.

"And what seed did you plant in me?" she asked, almost gently as she turned to him, as she inclined herself towards him. "What seed to return to you when it is done?"

He closed his eyes, the silence of grim caverns echoing around him, and pressed his hands close around hers, the red blood of a treacherous fruit staining and warming them both against the emptiness. In the darkness beneath the earth and behind his eyes, he saw again the queen promised in her new aspect, and held the promise close within his breast.

"A hope and a vengeance," he answered, opening his eyes. "A companion ... and a queen."

She looked at him. Persephone, the maiden stolen, and the queen returned. She looked into his breast that held a cavernous heart, and smiled, raising their linked hands between them, yet bound together in ribbons of red.

"And will you taste of that seed, then?" she murmured, gentle and cruel in equal measure. "Will you taste of that binding, husband, and be bound to me when I spring forth, as I am bound to you when I fall back?" 

Never more terrible had she looked than that moment, and never more painful had hope sprung within his breast. He trembled against the strength of her, and did not speak to answer. Could not, not then, not in the face of her. 

So instead, he leaned forward, and touched her stained fingers to his lips. He curled his hand through hers, the pomegranate pressed between them, and leaned in to drink red treachery down. To taste the fruit of her hands, as she had tasted the fruit of his, and bind his empty heart there to hers. A promise, a binding. A hope and a vengeance, in the darkness beneath the earth, from which all seeds sprang forth, and to which all seeds returned.

He stood there as her companion. And she, forever more, as his queen.


End file.
